


You're the Best Thing That I've Ever Found

by kaspbrak-tozier89 (summercarntspel)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Established Relationship, Good Parents Maggie & Wentworth Tozier, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Minor Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris, Richie Tozier & Stanley Uris Are Best Friends, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Sickfic, Soft Eddie Kaspbrak, Soft Richie Tozier, Stomach Ache, for real it is 4 am my dudes, maybe a touch ooc but we're all ooc when we're sick huh, no beta we die like men, we love patty uris in this house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:40:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23115640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summercarntspel/pseuds/kaspbrak-tozier89
Summary: “I’m on my way,” Eddie says, key jingling when he grabs them off the hook by the door. He sounds long-suffering and just this side of annoyed, but Richie can see his eyes, and they're overflowing with worry and devotion. Richie feels like his heart is being squeezed, but it’s the nicest feeling his body is producing at the moment. “Try to get it all up before I get there. You know I sympathy-vomit.”---OR: Richie gets sick with a stomach bug at a meeting and it's Soft Eddie to the rescue.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 10
Kudos: 180





	You're the Best Thing That I've Ever Found

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from "Handle with Care" by the Traveling Wilburys
> 
> CW: vomit and tummy troubles! Nothing too extreme, but be aware that Richie is Sick sick.

It hits him like a truck.

One minute, he’s sitting with Steve and some of the crew for the upcoming tour, shooting the shit and figuring out some vague logistics, and the next minute, he’s running to the office bathroom, the hand he slaps over his mouth barely pulled away in time for him to throw up the peanut butter and banana smoothie Eddie made him for breakfast.

This, Richie decides, sweaty forehead resting against the toilet seat, does not bode well.

“ _ Fuck _ ,” he whines, a tentative hand splaying against his stomach. It gurgles and lurches under his fingers, and feeling the rumbling multiples his queasiness twofold.

Something that feels like a hot coal fucking plummets in his gut and his eyes widen in what, he assumes, is a look of sheer terror. Oh no, oh  _ God _ .

If it wasn’t happening to him, he’d find it funny, but that’s having the sense of humor of a toddler for you.

Steve is knocking on the door and poking his head in, asking if Richie is doing a repeat performance of what happened pre-return to Derry the year before. Richie doesn’t answer him, too focused on spinning himself around to sit on the toilet instead, jeans and sushi-patterned boxers bunched at his ankles. Steve has seen him in worse positions, so he just shakes his head, flicks his gave up to meet Steve’s, and crosses his arms tight over his burbling stomach.

“Call Eddie,” he grits out through his teeth, brings a foot to kick the door so Steve gets the hint to go this second or face the fucking consequences, “Now, man,  _ please _ .”

Steve goes, mutters something about this being the first time Richie has said please in at least six months, and Richie hears himself let out a horrified groan at the way his intestines twist before everything he’s ever eaten, everything he’s ever fucking thought about eating, is making its grand reappearance into the world.

By the time Richie staggers out of the bathroom, feeling like he lost ten pounds in the worst, worst way, Steve is Facetiming Eddie, explaining that no, he doesn’t know what happened and stop shooting the goddamn messenger, Eddie, Christ’s sake.

Richie’s glad that Eddie and Steve are on better terms. When Eddie first moved in and they started their Big Gay Adventure, it had been a near-constant pissing contest between Richie’s two favorite dudes. It was as close to hell on earth as he could get, barring the whole killing a psycho alien clown in a sewer thing.

After a lot of stepping on toes and walking on eggshells and Richie’s tongue getting tired from licking everyone’s--Eddie’s, Steve’s, his _own_ \--wounds, they’d reached some sort of agreement. Or, at least, a stalemate. They mostly stay out of each other’s way now, but that works.

“I’m dying,” Richie announces, stumbling to a chair. The crew guys have fucked off, it seems, and Richie’s content with that. He doesn’t want anyone he wouldn’t consider a real pal around when the possibility of shitting his pants is so real.

“You’re not dying, dickwad,” Eddie snaps through the phone, “Gimme to him, Steve.”

Under cheerier circumstances, Richie would make a crack about how Eddie’s sharp New England accent, the one he insists he doesn’t have anymore, really shines through when he’s bitching. It’s adorably reminiscent of long days spent in the clubhouse together, Eddie’s sun-pinked, freckled cheeks puffed up in annoyance,  _ gimme that, gimme a turn, gimme a lick’a your bomb pop, Richie, you know they’re my favorite _ .

As it stands, though, Richie feels his heart hammer at the sound of Eddie’s voice. Whatever bug he’s got coursing through his system must include the symptoms of turning into a huge sap and getting butterflies on top of the shits because Eddie’s voice sounds like  home  and  love . It’s so  _ mushy _ , and it makes him smile through the pain throbbing through his whole body.

He grabs the phone--his, he notices, based on the crack in the top corner of the screen and the dumb PopSocket with Stan’s face on it that he’d gotten as a gag gift last Hanukkah--and clutches it in his clammy hands.

“Hi, ‘Sketti,” he says, voice sounding sluggish and tired, “are you comin’ to rescue me?”

“You want me to?” Eddie asks. His eyebrows are drawn and pinched and he’s frowning, but he sounds calmer than he’d been with Steve. That isn’t surprising, considering. “Can you drive home or should I come get you?”

“Would it be better to puke while driving or riding shotgun?”

Eddie looks at him with a familiar mix of disgust and quiet affection--that, too, reminds him of childhood and teen years, of times when Richie would snake an arm over Eddie’s waist in that army-green hammock and smoosh their bony hips together while they read old issues of Superman. Eddie would pretend he hated it, but within minutes, sometimes seconds, he’d be shoving himself closer, tangling his feet with Richie’s and knocking their ankles together. Richie knows now that it was their dumb, kiddie mating dance, their attempt at crawling into each other’s skin before they knew what that meant. Back then, it was just a helluva way to spend an afternoon.

Richie, in spite of how garbage he feels, smiles again.

“I’m on my way,” Eddie says, key jingling when he grabs them off the hook by the door. He sounds long-suffering and just this side of annoyed, but Richie can see his eyes, and they’re overflowing with worry and devotion. Richie feels like his heart is being squeezed, but it’s the nicest feeling his body is producing at the moment. “Try to get it all up before I get there. You know I sympathy-vomit.”

\---

The ride home isn’t bad. Steve sends them on their way with a wicker waste basket lined with six or seven Walgreens bags and Eddie demands he hits the head again before they leave the office, just in case. Something in the universe is looking out for them, because they time it just right to miss the bulk of the afternoon traffic between Steve’s office and home.

For years, it had been  _ Richie’s house _ . Then, when Eddie moved in, it had been  _ Richie and Eddie’s house _ . At some point, that morphed into  _ the house _ , which quickly morphed into  _ home _ . Richie never let himself think too long about how it only felt like home after Eddie got there, because he cried enough as it was.

When Eddie pulls into the garage, Richie’s body, which had behaved for the ride, apart from a wicked headache and chills that made his teeth chatter while sweat prickled at his pores, kicks into overdrive.

“Fuck, fuck, I’m gonna hurl,” Richie practically gurgles, diving out of the car before Eddie can even shift it into park. He hears Eddie scolding him as he wrestles with the key code to get inside, and he thanks whatever deity can hear him that he let Eddie bully him into shelling out for the fancy digital system. He didn’t think his shaking hands could hold a key.

He makes it to the downstairs bathroom, which is a blessing, because Eddie really  _ is  _ a sympathy puker, has been since he was a kid--once, in first grade, Bill had gotten sick after eating a potato bug on a dare from Richie and Eddie barfed right with him the second Bill gagged--and he falls to his knees in front of the toilet, stomach heaving as he burps and gags. He knows his joints will give him hell later, but his whole body already aches like he got run over by a bus, so, no harm, no foul.

“Rich?” Eddie asks, knocking on the door. Unlike Steve, he doesn’t poke his head in, and Richie is grateful, because he’s going to be doing an encore of his earlier twist, drop trough, and try not to cry in T-minus two seconds. “You want me in there with you?”

The offer would make his heart flutter if his gut wasn’t on fire. Eddie Kaspbrak, willing to risk a serious case of the upchucks just to comfort him? What a guy.

“ _ Ungh _ ,” Richie grunts, running a hand through his sweaty hair, feeling it plaster itself to his forehead as he settles himself on the toilet, “ _ No _ , Eds, stay… stay out there, trust me, dude.”

He hears the pop of Eddie’s knees as he sinks to the floor outside the door, hears him slide his back against the wood. “You okay, bub?”

And shit, it’s so sweet and genuine that Richie’s heart  _ does  _ flutter, intestines be damned. They’re fucking good at bickering and winding each other up, and he knows that neither would have it any other way, not in a million years, not in a billion fucking years, but Eddie has this amazing gift of knowing just when Richie needs him to be soft, gentle, treat him with kid gloves for a second. Richie can only hope that he does the same for Eddie when he needs it.

He wants to say that, too, as he feels his face flush at the pet name. He means to coo at Eddie, wants to say something love-drunk and stupid, but there are extenuating circumstances.

What leaves his mouth is an ugly snort and “Bro, are you listening to me shit? Kinky.”

Eddie, bless him, doesn’t snark back, even though Richie fully deserves it, and Richie is so, so lucky to have him, so grateful that Eddie just  _ knows _ , because, as minutes tick by and cramps wrack through him, he’s feeling so much worse, so small, so _sick_.

After he gets to his feet, flushes, and douses the room with the can of Hawaiian Breeze air freshener that lives on the back of the toilet, Eddie knocks again.

“Is it safe yet?”

Richie is scrubbing his hands under lukewarm water and trying to avoid looking at his reflection in the mirror. He nods, realizes a second later that Eddie can’t see him, and sighs.

“Think so.” Richie can hear how weak his voice sounds and it makes him wince.

Eddie opens the door and steps inside the room, frowning. He slides his arms around Richie’s waist and leans up on his tiptoes so he can hook his chin over Richie’s shoulder and lock eyes with the reflection Richie is still pointedly avoiding. 

“Hey, baby…” Eddie murmurs, lips close to the shell of Richie’s ear, and Richie shivers, but he isn’t sure if it’s the fever or the way Eddie is pulling out all the stops on this pet name train. “You feel any better now?”

Richie sags against him, feels so stupidly safe and protected in Eddie’s sinewy arms. “Nuh uh. Think I’m dyin’, Spaghetti.”

Really, he’s proud of Eddie--he’s always proud of Eddie, but still. Eddie has gotten much better in the nine months, give or take, that he’s lived with Richie. Better with expressing himself and better with handling germs and messes (thanks, therapy and Lexapro). Richie would love him no matter what, has loved him since before he knew why he needed, absolutely  _ needed  _ to wrestle with Eddie and pin him to the ground and smack a noisy kiss to his button nose and pinch his flushed cheeks, but he’s still so proud of the leaps and bounds Eddie makes every damn day.

“You’re not dying, don’t say that,” Eddie scolds him, looking serious. That, of course, is still a very touchy subject, and Richie suspects no amount of therapy sessions and Lexapro prescriptions will change that. He’s surprisingly okay with that being the case. “Let’s get you to bed, huh? You want some chicken soup? Tea?”

Richie lets Eddie lead him out of the bathroom, and he leans against the wall when Eddie stops in the kitchen to root through the pantry for something warm and soothing.

“Can we go to the couch, actually?” Richie asks, tipping his head back against the wall and letting his eyes slip closed. The headache is getting worse. “I don’t… My mom used to set me up on the couch.”

It was true, too. As a kid, when he got sick, Maggie would tuck him under a mountain of spare blankets on the sofa in the rec room. She said it was so he was closer to the bathroom and to the kitchen, but he knew she also understood that Richie’s nervous brain needed something to do while he was sick, and the rec room TV was good for that. She could hear him if he called for her easier, too.

Fuck, he misses his mom. He’ll have to give her a call when he feels less like he’s going to keel over because, pushing seventy or not, he wouldn’t put it past her to haul ass across the country to drown him in can after can of warm Ginger Ale if she thought it would make him feel better.

“Sure thing,” Eddie nods, flicking on the fancy-ass electric tea kettle he’d bought as a self-housewarming gift when he moved in, “It’ll keep your nasty sick sweat off’a my pillows.”

Richie smiles, just a bit, and shakes his head. How he managed to get so lucky, he’d never know, but he wouldn’t look a gift horse in its Napoleonic complex and polo shirts.

While Richie’s tea steeps, something that’ll become a homemade version of the Starbucks Medicine Ball that Patty swears by and reminds them about, usually through Stan, every time someone in the group has a bit of a sniffle in a Skype call, Eddie grabs as many throw blankets and extra comforters out of the hall closet as he can carry. He gives Richie orders to strip down and “get comfy,” which Richie does, and Richie feels his heart do that overwhelming squeeze thing when Eddie tucks the blankets around him, cocooning him in their fluffy, Snuggle scent booster smelling goodness.

“I’ll be back,” Eddie says, tossing the remote onto the blob of blankets that Richie has become part of, “Put on what you want.”

Richie nods, turns on the TV on, and pulls up their shared Hulu account. It shouldn’t feel so grossly domestic, seeing  _ Richie _ ,  _ Eds _ ,  _ Rich & Eds _ under the  _ Who’s Watching? _ on the screen--Bev teased them relentlessly the first time she caught a glimpse of it, but Eddie insisted, too loud, always too fucking loud, that it was the best way to keep track of shit, Beverly, what’s it to ya--but it does. 

By the time Eddie is back, carrying a massive mug featuring a star of David and LET’S GET HANUKKRUNK in bold letters, another Hanukkah gift from Stan and Patty, Richie is five minutes into an episode of Bob’s Burgers that he’s watching in the loosest sense of the term.

“Hey, didn’t you voice a guy in this one?” Eddie asks, handing over the mug and waiting patiently for Richie to shove his hands out of the folds in the blankets to cradle it close. He settles down beside the pile of blankets, pretzeling himself in what little space is left on the sofa.

“Mm…” Richie hums, inhaling the peachy, minty smell of the tea. He takes a sip and feels the warmth slide down his throat. It soothes him immediately. “I think Mickey’s in this one, yeah. Don’t remember.”

Eddie nods and gives him that same soft smile he always gives him when something Richie’s done impresses him. He smiled that way when Richie would climb the tallest tree in the schoolyard to impress him, only to be screamed at by a frantic Mrs. Grove who was afraid he’d fall and crack his thick skull open, and when Richie landed a decent role in the high school play their freshman year, and when Richie matched him--goaded Eddie into matching  _ him _ , actually--shot for shot after they killed that fucking clown the second time, and when Richie kissed him square on the lips after Eddie, drunk off his cute little ass, told the six of them he might leave his wife because, surprise, she was just like his mother _and_ he might like dudes and wasn’t that a little fucked, guys? The years changed, but the look stayed the same. It said _ I like you, Trashmouth, you’re pretty cool, I guess _ , and Richie always felt pretty cool when it was turned his way.

“How are you feeling now?” Eddie whispers, a hand ghosting over Richie’s face to take off his glasses, which have steamed up from the heat of the tea. He runs a hand through Richie’s hair, too, as he sets the glasses onto the little side table next to the couch, and Richie purrs at the feeling. “I texted the group chat and Bev said Ben had something like this last week, but it only lasted a day or two. Mikey had something, too, but it was more of an upper respiratory thing.”

Richie nods and sips his tea, smiling into the mug when he notices that Eddie hasn’t moved the hand from his hair. He’s still carding his fingers through it and tugging at the inky locks. Richie lets his eyes slip closed and blink open slowly, vision foggy and unfocused without his glasses on. Usually, it would bother him, but the blurry shapes on the TV are comforting, in a weird way.

“A little better right now,” Richie says, taking a bigger gulp of the tea now that it’s cool enough. He’s got to admit, Patty and her Starbucks addiction might be onto something, if the real thing tastes anything like the bootleg version she Facebook messaged Eddie the recipe for. “Thanks for taking care of me, Eds. I love you.”

They say it a lot--a ton, actually--and have ever since that first drunk, dry, chapped-lipped kiss at the stupid Derry Townhouse in front of their five drunken comrades, but sometimes, it feels so real when he says it that Richie is briefly terrified by just how true it is. He worries, for a second, that one day Eddie will realize how ass-over-tea-kettle in love he is and get scared, too. So far, though, nothing like that has happened, and he hopes it never will.

“You don’t have to thank me, Richie,” Eddie scoffs, massaging the tips of his fingers against Richie’s scalp, scritching blunt nails over the parting of his messy hair, “We’re partners. You need taken care of, I take care of you. I need it, you take care of me. That’s what we do, man.”

Richie, feeling overwhelmed again, always, every time Eddie spouts some poetic bullshit that should make him roll his eyes but just makes him turn into fucking putty, moves to put his mug on the side table and offers Eddie one mug-warmed hand. He half-expects Eddie will glare at it and start listing off all the germs and bacteria living on Richie’s palms when he’s as sick as he is, but, because Eddie  _ knows _ , knows what to do and what to say and, maybe more importantly, what not to do and say, he just shoots Richie a wry little smile and knits their fingers together, his thumb stroking over the bottom knuckle of Richie’s.

“I love you,” Richie says again, because he can, voice low as he watches the television with glassy eyes. Mickey  _ is  _ in this episode, he can tell when he hears his voice, or a Voice that isn’t too far from his own, saying something about not wearing underwear in prison.

Eddie squeezes his hand about half a dozen times in a steady rhythm, and Richie thinks about his parents doing that with him when he was still little enough to hold their hands, his mother telling him three squeezes meant  _ I love you _ . By that logic, Eddie loved him at least double the normal amount.

  
“I love you, too, dumbass,” Eddie says, a gentle lilt to his voice, and it’s the last thing Richie hears clearly before he slips into a cozy sleep, sickness forgotten in favor of making room for all the  _ I love you _ s he plans to squeeze into Eddie’s hand the moment he wakes up.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Come scream about our funky bunch of losers on Tumblr @summercarntspel or Twitter @polythene_sum (I may be making a different fandom Twitter for IT and my love for Bill Hader, but we'll see!)
> 
> p.s. the episode of Bob's Burgers I pulled from is "Bob Fires the Kids" in season 3! Bill does the voice of Mickey and I couldn't Not include it.
> 
> Comments are truly my bread and butter, so hmu and ask me about my ever-growing list of reddie songfics.


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